€500,000 Make Arma Not War mod competition finalists revealed
Has it unearthed the next DayZ?
A year ago developer Bohemia launched a €500,000 competition called Make Arma Not War to uncover the best modifications for army game Arma 3. After all, mod culture runs deep at Bohemia, and it's where DayZ came from.
Today the finalists are revealed, 50 entries whittled down from 250. They span four categories but the grand prize - €200,000 - focuses on the Total Modification category.
A Total Modification is a mod that "delivers new context of gameplay and setting represented by an array of add-ons and playable content", the competition website states. "Total modification can focus on any type of gameplay ... genre or setting."
In that category there's already a mod popular with the community, called Epoch - an eerie open-world survival game with a heavy bent on building. It's set in the year 2035, after the mass extinction of billions of people, the remnants of an advanced society strewn all around.
Another Total Modification mod that caught my eye was Reign of Jurassic, probably because it features an abandoned island with dinosaurs on it.
In the Single-Player category there are a couple of notable inspired-by mods: Grand Theft Altis, in which you play Nikos, leader of a gang trying to maintain peace and normality for citizens in his district; and Hitman Mission, a "tribute" to the Hitman series of games.
In the Multiplayer category there's a mod called Get Wrecked that sounds an awful lot like Scrapheap Challenge, that old telly show hosted by Kryton off Red Dwarf. You scour junk yards to make your beast of a machine that will survive battle with all others.
There's also a creepy-sounding survival mod called Hunting Trip, that has an actual swamp monster, and there's a one-versus-everyone spy game called The Hunt.
Bohemia's website has links to all the mod finalists. The winners will be announced in March.